Like Woodward and Bernstein, Two Peas in a Pod

I found out last week that my addiction is genetic: My son is a news junkie like me. Growing up, I suffered alone, but now? Now I've got someone with whom to share newspaper articles and soak in the alluring glow of CNN Headline News. I am enabling him, and he is enabling me. Wait 'til he tries Google News. He won't be able to stop.

When I was growing up, I asked my parents if we could discuss issues at the dinner table like my friend's family did. My mother humored me, promising that we would talk about current events that night at dinner.

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But soon after the discussion started, my parents changed the subject to the mortgage or something equally humdrum while my brother lobbed peas into my glass of milk. So much for my roundtable; instead, I got an earful of household concerns and a mouthful of flying veggies.

Yet in college, my news addiction was well fed. I aced my journalism classes, where I was required to read either The New York Times or The Boston Globe daily. I read both. I loved my political science classes, riveted by my professor's recounting of riots he'd witnessed in Jordan. And I was probably the only 20-year-old on campus who watched 60 Minutes on Sunday evenings.

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So when my fourth grader sat down next to me to watch the State of the Union Address last week, I got a little rush.

"What's funding?" he asked. I explained how Congress decides how much money will be spent on certain programs.

"How come only half the people are standing up and clapping?" he inquired. I explained partisan politics and election year posturing.

"Why don't the guys in black clap?" he asked. I told him that Supreme Court Justices can't appear to take sides. They're judges, after all.

I thought he'd yawn and leave, but I actually had to send him upstairs past his bedtime. The next day, I found him reading the newspaper at the kitchen table.

"There's a civil war brewing in Kenya between ethnic groups over fixed election results," I explained. He asked a few questions, and then left to go find some socks.

I considered flipping on the TV morning news, but I want to start him out slow. When I was his age, the news cycle wasn't yet a 24-hour event. Now you can get news anytime, anywhere, and it's addicting.

I'll save it for dinnertime, I thought. Only, I didn't serve any peas figuring that the rest of the family might have other things to talk about besides the day's headlines.